


Leaves Start to Change

by coricomile



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV Outsider, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24012817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coricomile/pseuds/coricomile
Summary: Sam cried sometimes.
Relationships: Bobby Singer/Karen Singer, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 12
Kudos: 65





	Leaves Start to Change

Sam cried sometimes. He did his best to hide it, said his yessirs and turned up tired to practice learning how to break down guns and to wrestle with men twice his size and to learn how to keep his head down. But some of those nights where John took Dean with him, when they didn't call to check in, Bobby could hear little Sammy sobbing himself to sleep in the bedroom he'd had since he was three and barely old enough to talk. 

Bobby never had his own kids. Life was- life was too much. God knew Karen wanted to bring their babies into the world, wanted to have a little girl with her eyes and her smarts and Bobby's stubbornness, wanted a little boy with his daddy's fight and his momma's heart. She deserved better than Bobby. She deserved so much more. 

But looking at little Sam and Dean, boys raised on the road with their father, Bobby never felt regret for denying her. He would have wrecked his children the way John had. He would have been their ruin. Would his blood son have Dean's haunted eyes? Would his blood cry like Sam, too scared, too embarrassed, already too old to seek comfort at a five years old? Would his blood be so twisted up in themselves that the world fell away?

Sam cried sometimes, barely even old enough to wear real underwear, barely out of diapers, and John ignored it, but Dean- Dean, barely old enough to feed himself- always made sure to wipe away the tears and to make silly faces and hold his little brother close. John had never been a bad man, but Bobby had never met anyone so single minded. John loved his boys, but they were pushed off into the future. John could love them right when they were safe, when he didn't need to save them instead of love them. When he could be a father instead of a sergeant. He'd been a damn fool, but no matter how many times Bobby tried to talk sense into him, John went his own way. 

Bobby tried to be a good parent. Hell, he raised those boys just as much as John did. He made dinners and cleaned scrapes and wracked his brain for homework answers that didn't' have to do with monsters and rituals. He tried to raise those boys into good men, but there was only so much he could do.

He saw the wreck and ruin inside them, easy as breathing. He saw the way Dean held Sam too tight, saw the frantic fear in his eyes whenever Sam was gone too long or hurt in the smallest of ways. He saw the way stubborn little Sammy melted away into that sweet little boy as soon as Dean needed him to be. He saw it, long before John even realized that there was something wrong. That he made too many mistakes to set right. 

He saw Sam, sweet little Sammy with his puppy dog eyes and the devil inside of him, twist his brother. He saw Dean fold into it. Dean- Dean, too big for his britches and John's son through and through. Dean, who at sixteen years old would murder a man- a human, a _person_ \- for laying hands on his little brother. Dean, who never stood a chance. 

Sam cried sometimes, but Dean was always there to wipe away the tears and to bring the fury of god down on anyone who caused them. Sam cried, and Dean turned into something cold and foreign and inhuman. Bobby had been hunting for a long time. He knew what monsters looked like. And sometimes, when he looked into Dean's eyes, he saw that wrongness. He saw that corruption and evil. And sometimes, when he looked into Sam's-

He'd been there for the fallout. He had been there when Sam had asked him, pleading and young and scared and too damn smart to be hunter trash, ready for the easy out. He had run every connection he'd had, legit and not, to get Sam the papers and the requirements and the home address he'd never had to apply for schooling. Dean had never had the brain for it, the same way Bobby and John had never had the brain for it, but Sam was so damn smart. So good at fitting into the world outside of blood and spirits. 

John had never forgiven him. John had gone to death with Bobby's name a curse on his lips for ripping his family apart. Maybe Bobby had deserved it. He never could understand the Winchesters, father or sons. But he'd tried. God above had he tried. Sweet little Sammy, with all that dark in him, with all those brains inside him- Bobby had tried. 

He had tried, but John- god damned John, with his bad luck and his stupid vengeance and his god damned need to be as ruinous as Bobby himself- up and got himself disappeared. And bless him, Dean couldn't rest. Dean couldn't just let go. Dean, who Bobby had failed. More than little Sammy, Bobby had failed that scared little boy with his momma's eyes and his daddy's hard, terrified heart. His own heart had ached when he'd heard Sam's voice again, too old and too sad and too much a man. 

He tried. He tried to help. And he failed, and he failed, and he failed-

"What did you _do_?" He asked, hands on Dean's heavy shoulders, shaking that stupid boy for all he was worth. He'd seen Sam- sweet little Sam, too smart and too stupid and with his heart blacked by something he never had the chance to fight against, but made too bright by Dean's sick, twisted love- dead on the sheets, eyes never to cry again. "What did you _do_?" 

And Dean, Dean who had never gotten to be a sweet boy, who had always been raised as a right hand man soldier, had looked at him with eyes so dark they could have already been through the pits of Hell and hadn't even fought. 

"It's Sam," he said, voice broken the same way John's had been too many years ago when Mary had been turned into flame and dust and blood. "What was I supposed to do?"

 _Let him die_ , Bobby had thought. Let him be another skeleton in the ground, rotting away like they all would some day. 

And Bobby- Bobby had always destroyed everything he had touched, just like his own daddy had said. He couldn't do a damn thing against that sick love that had raised up from the fire. He couldn't do a damned thing against those two boys, sons he never had but had tried to raise. Couldn't stop the dark in Sam that had been there since he had been born, couldn't stop the dark from spreading into Dean and making him just as twisted. 

"You idjit," he said, holding Dean to his chest. He could have died for them both. Would have, if given the chance. He would have died a thousand times over to not hear them taking comfort in each other, to have given them a real chance. To have saved them.

"It's Sammy," Dean said, broken and young the way he never got to be, snot and tears building on Bobby's coat. 

Sam cried, sometimes. And Dean was always there to wipe the tears, better or worse.

**Author's Note:**

> God love Bobby and he deserved better at every turn.


End file.
